A native support for Steamworks API will allow GDevelop games to take full advantage of Steam by accessing all of the underlying systems provided through the API.
This includes things such as pausing the game when the user opens the Steam Overlay, inviting friends to play, allowing players to unlock Steam Achievements, letting players compete on the Steam Leaderboards and much more.
Why it’s needed:
Most GDevelop 5 games that were distributed on Steam aren’t using the full advantage of the API (or even not using it at all) which results in Steam players not accomplishing the full interactions that Steam users would expect when playing a game (e.g. accessing Steam Overlay, Steam Achievements, Steam Leaderboards, etc.).
If I’m not mistaken, GameMaker Studio 2 and Construct 3 have the ability to integrate their games with the API directly in-engine.
It would be really great if GDevelop 5 also supports this.
Known guide:
There was a very detailed guide regarding Steam API written by Arthuro here. Frankly, I think it is very difficult to follow for most GDevelop users and I can’t verify if the guide still works with the current version of GDevelop 5. Moreover, Greenworks isn’t being maintained anymore as of 2022.
Greenworks possible alternative:
steamworks.js is still actively maintained as of this writing and maybe GDevelop 5 developers can take a look at this to see if it’s possible.
At the very least:
An official wiki documentation regarding how to manually integrate a GDevelop 5 game with the Steamworks API should suffice while we wait for the native support in the future.